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High-flying French modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel was despondent that his once-gilded life lay in tatters.
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He had tried to get out of dodge by flying to Dakar, a continent away from the Gendarme, but was pinched at Paris’ Charles DeGaulle Airport as he was boarding the jet in December 2021.
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Brunel had been accused of rape by several top models in addition to the rape of a 15-year-old girl along with sexual harassment. He had also been indicted for sex trafficking minors.
Before he could be tried, on Feb. 19, 2022, the 76-year-old was found hanging from a sheet in his jail cell at La Santé prison.
Brunel had been notorious in the fashion industry as the alleged rapist of aspiring mannequins — and as billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s continental connection for underage girls.
Once, he allegedly flew 11-year-old triplets from Eastern Europe to the hedge fund manager to be sexually assaulted as a birthday present.
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“He operated out of Paris and was a world-wide traveller,” Barry Levine — author of The Spider: The Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — told The Toronto Sun. “It’s not a stretch to say he was recruiting models out of Canada. He (allegedly) sent those underage triplets to his pal as a sick birthday present.”
Still, like the death of his pal in perversion Epstein, Brunel’s death solved a lot of woes for many powerful pedophiles. His demise also led to a slew of conspiracy theories, aided in part by the French cops keeping it zipped.
Now, a woman in California is suing Brunel’s estate, claiming the dead agent falsely imprisoned her, attempted to drug her, and eventually sexually assaulted her. The suit was filed in Los Angeles and first reported by Rolling Stone.
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According to the lawsuit, Brunel allegedly lured the woman in when she was an aspiring 18-year-old model in New York.
The victim was allegedly driven to Canada — likely the Montreal area — to a property owned by Brunel who operated in this country at the time.
“She could not leave and there were numerous attempts of offensive touching, sexually [sic] assaults, including groping,” the lawsuit contended, “as the men tried unsuccessfully to arouse her by providing her with drugs which she did not ingest.”
The suit added: “After a few days of being falsely imprisoned at the home, she woke and realized that Jean and his employees were getting into their cars and leaving.”
Using the the pseudonym, “Jessica Kramer,” the former model, now 40, got out of the home through a window and “hitched a ride back to New York.”
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At the time — believed to be 2002 — Brunel was still a kingmaker with Paris-based Karin Models. And he was allegedly supplying Epstein with underage girls.
“Jeffrey Epstein has told me that he has slept with over 1,000 of Brunel’s girls, and everything that I have seen confirms this claim,” former Epstein sex slave Virginia Giuffre said.
Kramer’s suit names defendants Does 1 through 50, unknown associates or employees of Brunel’s but “legally responsible in some manner for the allegations.”
Brunel’s estate and the Does are being sued for negligence, sexual assault, sexual battery, sexual harassment, gender violence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
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“Brunel would offer the girls ‘modelling’ jobs,” Giuffre said in a 2015 affidavit. “A lot of the girls came from poor countries or poor backgrounds, and he lured them in with a promise of making good money.”
Instead, the teens were joined by Brunel, Epstein and disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell for orgies at the financier’s hideaways in the Caribbean, Palm Beach and Paris.
Brunel denied any wrongdoing, citing his “utmost ethical standards.” But the creepy Frenchman’s antics were allegedly no secret in the modelling and fashion worlds.
By the early 2000s, he had moved to New York after being barred from model agency work in Paris. When Epstein was in the slammer in Palm Beach for underage prostitution, Brunel visited him at least 70 times.
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When he was finally arrested in December 2021, the man who discovered Milla Jovovich, Christy Turlington, and Sharon Stone was a wreck. He was also a full-blown coke head.
“It sounds so suspicious,” one alleged victim of Brunel’s, Thysia Huisman, told The Daily Beast. “I don’t believe it, that he killed himself. It’s like what happened to Epstein. It’s too convenient.”
Levine agreed.
“He died mysteriously like Epstein,” the author said. “We know very little of Brunel’s death and the circumstances. The conspiracy theory is that he was silenced like Epstein.”
Many high-profile pedophiles had a lot to lose if Brunel squawked about who did what. Levine said he doubts the public will ever see the client lists of Epstein and Brunel.
“There are men hiding in the shadows,” Levine added. “Hopefully this latest document dump will force the Department of Justice to go back and take another look at the people they can convict. And then, we will be a lot closer to justice.”
Jessica Kramer’s lawyer did not return the Sun’s calls.
@HunterTOSun
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